Prager And The Supposed Decline of American Religion

According to Dennis Prager, religion in America is in trouble. Why? Prager offers four reasons: (1) Our universities “have become essentially secular (and leftist) seminaries.” (2) Our clergy no longer “advocate their religion’s moral and religious standards” and instead, “promulgate the values they learned at their secular left-wing universities.” (3) “[T]he . . . products of this secular left-wing education” – apparently most of us – “are theologically, intellectually, and emotionally ill-prepared to deal with all the unjust suffering in the world.” (4) Liberal churches and synagogues fail to adequately respond to “Islamic violence.”
Prager’s explanations for the supposed decline of American religion are speculative at best. His initial premise – that “God is not doing very well these days” – is also taken for granted. As for his blame of Western universities, Rabbi Fink suggests an interesting alternative explanation (see also Conor Friedersdorf’s article in The Atlantic).

At college . . . [t]he umbilical cord is cut. Young men and women meet hundreds and thousands of people who think differently, look different, act different and believe differently. For the first, time, many people are challenged in their beliefs.
. . .
When that happens, people question their beliefs. They question why they were doing what they were doing. Sometimes they don’t have any good answers. Without answers, their beliefs will disappear.

I’m not convinced that more educated people are more secular. But if it’s true, perhaps religious institutions should ask why young people’s faith is so fragile, rather than blame universities for secular indoctrination.

University education aside, what strikes me about Prager’s four reasons is that they conflate (probably intentionally) secularism and leftism. When Prager says our universities are both secular and leftist, he means that they’re secular in a particularly leftist way. If, for example, our religious life is poisoned because our clergy “promulgate the values they learned at their secular left-wing universities,” then secularism isn’t really the problem. The problem, for Prager, is left-wing religion. More precisely, it’s that religious leaders are using liberal values to interpret and reinterpret traditional religious concepts and practices. Perhaps that’s problematic, but it’s not secularism.

There’s a healthy discussion to be had about the appropriate role of religious values in political life and of political values in religious life. But dismissing liberal religion as secular only obscures the issues. Whether God is or isn’t doing well in American depends, in large part, on how we define our terms, something Prager doesn’t even try to do. Is the religious/secular divide primarily about God or culture or traditional values or politics? Is American religion declining, or simply moving either to the left or right? Is leftist religion weaker than rightist religion? Perhaps, depending on the context. But these questions go over Prager’s head. They can’t be addressed with a handful of anecdotes (“I will never forget a Swedish pastor’s reaction to the 1994 sinking of the Estonia”) and platitudes (“the liberal wings of Christianity and Judaism are too influenced by secularism to make an effective religious case for God”).

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3 Responses

The existence of Avatar and the style of Batman movies prove you wrong.

-Conservative

PS:

“perhaps religious institutions should ask why young people’s faith is so fragile, rather than blame universities for secular indoctrination”

Answer: Universities get only part of the blame. Lets give Gladiator its due.

“There’s a healthy discussion to be had…”
-What need for discussion is there. I would rather pious people make the laws. A good Rabbi is a good Rabbi, not a bureaucratic.

“Whether God is or isn’t doing well in American depends, in large part, on how we define our terms, something Prager doesn’t even try to do.”
-I didn’t realize hashem’s success depended so crucially on Mr. Praeger. Apparently Mr. Praeger didn’t realize it either.

“They can’t be addressed with a handful of anecdotes…”
-Better to trust MSM and our elite “experts.”

-That’s what puzzles me most about this posting. My experience tells me something is true. If the “wisest” men of our era discussed whether our society is more or less religious today than in yesteryears and that was the only question I wanted answered, I wouldn’t feel that I was missing out on much by passing on tuning in to their discussion. It’d be like listening to two people argue that the sky is indigo not blue.

“Your reading comprehension skills are impressive, indeed”
-Nice of you to express concern over my reading skills. They’re fine. I was cracking a joke. I am sorry, I didn’t mean any harm or offense by it. My posting was sincere / if a little un-straightforward. After seeing the mass appeal of the new Batman movies, watching scads of episodes of South Park, listening to Lady Gaga, I can’t fathom the view that our culture isn’t more secular now than say — the days of Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (Frank Capra’s).

Better to trust Prager’s personal interactions with a Swedish pastor as more reliable?

-Best to trust my own. But to answer your question, I trust anecdotes and stories with parables more than I trust other modes.